


Turn the Page

by Missy



Series: A Boy, A Girl, and Their Love Story [2]
Category: Laverne & Shirley (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Humor, Minor Violence, Slapstick, Truth, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26388589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Laverne's being awfully nice to Shirley for some reason....
Relationships: Laverne DeFazio/Lenny Kosnowski
Series: A Boy, A Girl, and Their Love Story [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906522
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Turn the Page

**Author's Note:**

> Follows "Next Chapter" in the continuity!

Shirley Feeney let out a low, satisfied, primal groan as she pushed herself away from the dining room table. “I must say, Laverne, you’ve outdone yourself,” she said, gathering their dishes. “My favorite meal, a beautiful dessert, and no complaints about doing the cooking!”

“Aww, it wasn’t nothing, Shirl,” Laverne said. She stuck her head into the refrigerator and pulled out a Pepsi. 

Shirley was halfway through doing the dishes when two and three collided to make five in her mind. The last plate hit the bottom of the sink with a thud and she whirled to meet her roommate’s gaze. “All right, what’s going on?”

“Whaddya mean?” Laverne asked, sipping her Pepsi with unusual caution. Shirley sighed, watching her best friend thoughtfully, trying to click the puzzle pieces of their lives together. Funny, she looked a little bit plumper; and she’d been skipping breakfasts regularly, which didn’t track with that plumpness. She and Lenny had been huddling together more frequently – at the Pizza Bowl, and in the hallways at work. Mr. De Fazio had been angry with Laverne lately as well, leading to yet another deep freeze in their always turbulent relationship, which Shirley had chalked up to some odd argument. Her years of training as a junior Nancy Drew detective sent the wheels in her brain churning in circles.

“You’re treating me with unsparing kindness. When you do that, something’s afoot. Some unpleasant thing crawling around under the pristine sink that is our shared life that’s ready to emerge and bite my ankles.” They both glanced at the door and, miraculously, Squiggy didn’t burst through it.

“Maybe you should sit down, Shirl…” Laverne tried to guide her to the sofa but her legs went stiff and she resisted all attempts at being moved forward. 

“No! It’s awful news, I knew it! Terrible news! My…my father drowned! We’ve been fired! Carmine’s become a priest! Your father’s run off with an opera singer!” Shirley wailed. 

“No, no, heck no, and are you kidding?! Edna would kill him!” Shirley was forcibly deposited onto the couch, and Laverne sat down beside her – at a safe distance. “Um. You remember that night after the ball Lenny took me to? The night we spent alone in that suite together?”

“The night I told you both to be careful?” Shirley asked. She heard her jaw crack alarmingly loudly from the tension. “You…weren’t careful, were you?”

The innocence in her voice made Shirley cringe. Laverne said bluntly, “yeah. We weren’t. I’m pregnant. Want more chocolate cake?” Shirley’s eyes widened and a laugh came from her chest. It was not a pleasant laugh, nor was it particularly flattering. “Uh, Shirl?” Laverne worried aloud. “You okay?”

“I’m fine! Absolutely fine!” Shirley rubbed her eyes. “Oh, what a glorious evening! You’re pregnant by the worst man in the world! It’s the best day of my life!”

“Hey! That’s an awful mean thing to say. Len ain’t the worst person we know! Not with Squig running around. And he’s better than Hector! And Jake! Or Jerry Callihan, remember him?! And Alan Steckler, the guy who humped your ballet -” 

“Enough! Why are you defending that man?! He…impregnated you…and he hasn’t even asked you to marry him!”

Her shoulders slumped. “Yeah he did. Twice,” Laverne said.

“And you turned him down?” Laverne nodded. She found herself echoing her old words, back when Laverne had only thought she was pregnant, and that time by a total stranger. “Are you crazy?!”

“Waddya mean, ‘am I crazy’?” Laverne snapped. “You just called him the worst guy we know!”

Shirley sat up primly on the couch. “Yes, but he’s also the man who’s gotten you in trouble, and he’s trying to do the honorable thing. You should marry him, if only to make sure little Shirley or Fabian has a father…” 

“Yeah, well, I don’t want honor,” Laverne said. “Getting married just ‘cause you’re in trouble leads to..wait, Shirley or Fabian?” Her nose wrinkled up.

“What’s wrong with the name Fabian? It’s good enough for Fabian!” Shirley said. 

“Yeah, but Fabian’s Fabian and…geeze, listen to us,” she groaned. “The baby ain’t even out and we’re fighting over him.”

“You know for sure?” Laverne nodded. Shirley sighed deeply. “Well, I don’t necessarily approve of how this happened,” she said, “but I will try to support you.”

“Really, Shirl?” the relief in her best friend’s face was heartbreaking. 

“Of course! Just imagine, Laverne! What sort of awful, repulsive person would abandon their best friend in their time of need?”

The door slammed open. “Hello!” Squiggy glared morosely at Laverne as Lenny lingered behind him, a slump-shouldered, guilty looking shadow. “So does she know?”

“Yeah,” Laverne said.

“Good. Are you gonna agree to make an honest man of Lenny?” Squiggy asked.

“An honest man of him?!” Shirley exploded.

“Yeah!” Squiggy said. “She’s the one who lured Lenny in with her feminine negligence!” 

Shirley lunged toward Squiggy, who managed to dodge her. That put Shirley face-to-face with Lenny. “You!” she shouted, jabbing a fingertip at him. 

“I…me?” Lenny meeped out.

“I told you to be careful with her!” she punctuated every word by poking his chest. “I told you both to be safe and now…you!”

“Me?!” Lenny’s voice squeaked out. 

Before Shirley could regain control of herself, she balled her fist up and hit Lenny right between the legs.

The second her knuckles made contact with Lenny’s crotch, Shirley regretted what she’d done. “Oh good gravy! Leonard, I’m so sorry!” 

Lenny’s response was a high-pitched squeal as he fell to his knees, clutching himself.

“Shirl!” Laverne shouted, springing up from the couch. “Whaddya doing?! He’s ten pounds soaking wet! And it ain’t all his fault – I was there too!”

“I’m…I’m sorry…” She rushed over to the freezer, vaguely aware that Squiggy was shouting at her that she should’ve done that BEFORE they’d been made him an honorary step-uncle. Shirley rummaged around frantically in the freezer until she found ice cubes, and then grabbed the bag from the top of the refrigerator. Laverne and Squiggy (well, mostly Laverne) had helped Lenny onto the sofa.

“Are you all right? Did she break something?”

“No, but I’m pretty sure she bruised it,” Lenny moaned. 

Shirley arrived with the bag. “Put this on your bathing suit area,” she told Lenny, and he frowned and put it on his hip. “Not there, you…” Laverne rolled her eyes and adjusted the bag as Lenny sighed in relief.

“Thanks, Shirl,” he said. 

“I’m so sorry…”

“S’OK. Just don’t do it again. I know I’ve already done my duty to the Kosnowski liner, but I don’t wanna die non-potent. If you keep up with it, we’ll have to make Jenny the baby’s godmother.”

“Jenny, your sister?” Lenny nodded, and Shirley raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t she still breathe fire with the circus?”

“No! She happens to be the best sword swallower in all of lower Pewaukee!” Lenny snapped.

“Yeah, and I’d know,” Squiggy said, as Lenny shot him a foul look. “Look, you broads’ve gotta talk about whatever you’ve gotta yap about. Me and Len should beat feet…”

“We don’t have anything to talk about,” Laverne insisted. “I know Shirley’s mad ‘cause we ain’t married to two doctors or some businessman or something…”

“It’s not just that. Why did you do it by yourself?” Shirley asked. She couldn’t keep the wounded tone out of her voice. “Laverne, I’m your best friend! When you thought you were pregnant by a stranger, you asked me to take you to Doctor Fishburne. Why didn’t you ask me this time?”

She squirmed. “Maybe I didn’t want you to judge me. Letting something like that happen once was just an accident. Letting it happen twice made me sound like I was reckless.” Lenny reached over and squeezed her hand. “But I’m gonna be happy – gonna have fun, gonna get what I need out of life. A baby ain’t gonna change that, no matter what people like Rosie think of me.”

“I still want that for you,” Lenny said. “For you to be happy.”

“You too, Len,” Laverne said. Shirley felt her cheeks go pink at the smile they exchanged. It was as if…well, she wasn’t going to put pressure on either of them.

“Does your father know?” she said, to cool their passion.

Laverne nodded, physically recoiling. “Though I wish I didn’t tell him.”

“He ain’t been nice to either of us since he found out,” Lenny confessed. “In fact, I think he spat on my boots the last time I came in to shoot spitballs at his ceiling.”

Shirley cringed at that confession and wondered if Lenny was ever going to crow up. Well, she’d have to be a guiding influence in her future goddaughter’s life. “Squiggy, go find Mrs. Babbish.”

“Why, so she can yell at me about how French fries ain’t as good as rent money?”

“We aged those French fries, too,” Lenny remarked. “They was practically gourmand!”

Shirley grunted, shaking her head. “No, we need her with us. The five of us are going to go down to the Pizza Bowl and let Mr. De Fazio know that if he doesn’t start being nice to his daughter, we’ll stop eating there. With Edna on our side we’ll be an unbeatable combination!”

“Atta girl, Shirl!” said Laverne. They gathered their coats and headed for the door.

Shirley watched Lenny help Laverne into her jacket and wondered at what their mistake – no, she couldn’t call her future goddaughter a mistake – would cost all of them in the future.

But in the end, it didn’t matter. The two of them were going to need looking after, and she knew she’d have to be the one to do it.


End file.
